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Great Dark Spot
Published:
December 17, 2004
Great Dark Spot
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Sunlight illuminates the deep cut of Ithaca Chasma on Saturn's moon Tethys.
Chasma Crescent
The Cassini spacecraft captures Saturn's main rings in a study of light and dark. A bright knot is visible in the F ring near upper left. Ring scientists think features like this can be created wh...
The Unlit Face
+ View related feature story + View unlabeled image Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted two features shaped like the 1980s video game icon "Pac-Man" on moons of Saturn. One wa...
A Pair of 'Pac-Men'
When naming features on other worlds, scientists like to follow themes, and Dione is no exception. Dione possesses numerous features with names from Virgil's "Aeneid." The prominent crater showing ...
Virgil's Moon
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has had a busy week, snapping stunning new images of two of Saturn's moons -- smoggy Titan on Feb. 15 and wrinkled Enceladus on Feb. 16.
Saturn's Moons Titan and Enceladus
This close pairing of Janus and Epimetheus shows the two moons at "high phase," meaning that only a thin sliver of sunlit terrain is visible on each moon. Portions of each are also lit feebly by re...
Dim Duo
Zooming In On Titan October 25, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06116 This map of Titan's surface, generated from images taken during Cassini's...
Zooming In On Titan
Several sets of shadows are cast onto the A ring in this image taken about a week after Saturn's August 2009 equinox. Near the middle of the image, shadows are cast by vertically extended clumps i...
Shadows and More Shadows
This Cassini spacecraft view shows a group of more than a dozen spokes in Saturn's outer B ring. The B ring displays the azimuthal asymmetry, or variation with longitude around the planet, that is ...
Spoke Set
Saturn's moon Prometheus chases Pandora in this Cassini view, but the outcome of their race has already been decided by gravity. Prometheus orbits closer to Saturn and thus moves faster than does P...
Racing Rocks
Storms and Feathery Clouds June 1, 2004 Full-Res: PIA05399 Saturn's southern hemisphere shows dark spots and wisps of high clouds...
Storms and Feathery Clouds
Images from the magnetospheric imaging instrument and the ion and neutral camera onboard the Cassini spacecraft reveal aspects of the interactions between Saturn's dynamic population of hot energet...
Neutral Gas Cloud Around Titan
This fascinating movie from Cassini shows the changing shapes of features in the outer haze layers of Titan's atmosphere. The original movie was created from 36 images taken over the course of thr...
Titan's Shifting Hazes
Map of the trajectory NASA's Magellan spacecraft took to explore Venus.
Magellan Trajectory Map
This color picture of Antarctica is one part of a mosaic of pictures covering the entire Antarctic continent taken during the hours following Galileo's historic first encounter with its home planet...
Earth - Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica
The shadow of the moon Mimas is seen through the unlit side of the Cassini Division of Saturn's rings. As Saturn approaches its August 2009 equinox, the planet's moons cast shadows onto the rings....
Shadow in the Cassini Division
In a splendid portrait created by light and gravity, Saturn's lonely moon Mimas is seen against the cool, blue-streaked backdrop of Saturn's northern hemisphere. Delicate shadows cast by the rings ...
Nature's Canvas
The Cassini spacecraft takes an angled view toward Saturn, showing the southern reaches of the planet with the rings on a dramatic diagonal. North on Saturn is up and rotated 16 degrees to the lef...
Angling Saturn
Two slim crescents smile toward the Cassini spacecraft following an occultation event. Taken only five minutes after Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) first approached the limb of Rh...
Rhea Releases Enceladus
Plumes of water vapor and other gases escape at high velocity from the surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, as shown in this artist concept. The "shear heating" mechanism suggests that tidal forces...
Shear Heating on Enceladus
This image shows Titan, Saturn's largest moon (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles, across), with a streak-like cloud near its south pole. The cloud may be part of a region of polar clouds seen duri...
Titan's Polar Streak
Four minutes after Cassini captured dark Mimas and softly-lit Enceladus (see Light from Many Paths) near the ringplane, Mimas had slipped into near-obscurity against Saturn's dark side. Mimas (397...
Mimas in Hiding
This image from NASA's Cassini mission was taken on Nov. 27, 2012, with Cassini's narrow-angle imaging camera.
Vortex at Saturn's North Pole
It's difficult not to think of an egg when looking at Saturn's moon Methone, seen here during a Cassini flyby of the small moon. The relatively smooth surface adds to the effect created by the oblo...
Gray Egg
+ View Full Res This raw, unprocessed image of Saturn's moon Enceladus was taken on Oct. 19, 2011. As the spacecraft passed Enceladus, its infrared instruments, cameras and other instruments moni...
Enceladus Flyby E-15 (Raw Image #8)
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